Chapter 6 - THE CEMETERY
Rebecca forbade me from going.
Ortiz agreed.
I went anyway.
Not alone.
Federal agents surrounded the cemetery while I walked toward the Mercer family crypt wearing a hidden microphone.
The afternoon sky was gray.
Rows of stone markers carried the names of Mercer men.
The women were buried under maiden names or not listed at all.
Margaret waited beside Robert’s grave.
She looked like Diane reflected in dark water.
Same face.
Different eyes.
Eleanor stood several feet away, unrestrained.
She held the brown ledger.
“You kidnapped her?” I asked.
Eleanor answered.
“No. I came willingly.”
Margaret wanted the truth public.
Eleanor wanted every missing girl identified.
They did not trust police because Mercer judges had buried cases before.
Margaret opened the ledger.
Names, birth dates, payments, adoptive families, medical studies.
Thirty-eight girls.
Six deaths.
Fourteen sealed adoptions.
Nine unknown locations.
The rest were listed as biological reserves.
My unborn daughter had already been entered.
CLAIRE SUBJECT — FEMALE — TRANSFER AFTER DELIVERY.
My knees weakened.
Margaret pointed toward the crypt.
“Diane keeps the original birth certificates inside Robert’s coffin.”
He had threatened to expose her, so she buried the documents with him, believing no court would approve an exhumation without proof.
The ledger was proof.
Ortiz stepped from behind a stone monument.
“We can protect the evidence.”
Margaret laughed.
“You couldn’t protect Claire in daylight.”
She was right.
Then a rifle shot cracked through the cemetery.
Stone exploded beside Eleanor’s head.
Agents pulled us down.
Margaret shoved the ledger into my hands.
Another shot struck her shoulder.
The shooter escaped through the trees.
Diane had tried to silence her own twin.
Margaret survived.
The ledger did too.
Ortiz obtained the exhumation order.
Inside Robert’s coffin, beneath the lining, investigators found original birth certificates and signed transfer agreements.
One certificate belonged to Eleanor.
Another carried my name.
I had not been born Claire Reed.
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My birth name was Claire Mercer.
Diane was my biological mother.
